Kenyan whistleblower commemorated in a book
(Read article summary)A Kenyan whistleblower who exposed the largest financial scandal in Kenya is the subject of the book, 'The True Story of David Munyakei,' which will be showcased next week in the US.
Last year, I wrote about a new book on a Kenyan whistleblower, written by a British journalist. A reader pointed me to Kenyan writer Billy Kahora, who'd also just published a book, locally, about a Kenyan whistleblower – in fact, the man who, as Kahora tells it, exposed Kenya's biggest-ever corruption scandal. The book, The True Story of David Munyakei, is one of the few creative nonfiction books in Kenya, where media is driven by profit and investigative space hardly exists. Hmm... starting to sound familiar?
Kahora is a driver of Kenya's literary scene. He's the managing editor of Kwani?, home to fabulous work by African writers, and wrote the script for Soul Boy, a new film by Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer. He has degrees in journalism and was a 2007 Chevening Scholar at the University of Edinburgh.
I did a Q&A with Kahora, which got lost in the bowels of my inbox. I've just re-discovered it – and just in time to tell those of you near Minnesota (or willing to buy a plane ticket) that you can meet Kahora and other African writers on October 8 and 9 in Minneapolis. Books for Africa is having a terrific conference featuring Kahora, Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan (Say You're One of Them), Somali writer Nuruddin Farah (Sweet and Sour Milk), and Alexandra Fuller (Scribbling the Cat), who grew up in Rhodesia (though I'm told we call it Zimbabwe now).
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